Gaia Community: Mu's Blog

In defence of Dennett

http://mu.gaia.com — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 11:12:36 GMT

I'm so happy to have joined the II pod on Zaadz, I've even found a very interesting thread featuring Ewan and Kessels.

I realise I'm coming late to the thread ... but it's not likely this age-old problem is going away anytime soon!

Infimitas is right, it is a tricky problem indeed, and he stating it very clearly.

I think I read Dennett differently and I’d like to kick the conversation off again as I’d love to deepening my understanding of it from an integrally-aware angle.

more >

Tags: dennett, dharma, two-truths, consciousness, buddha, wilber

Why I am “Integral” « both/and

http://mu.gaia.com — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:02:28 GMT

"Being truly integral means, among other things, developing intimacy with everything that constitutes us. A genuinely integral consciousness lives such intimacy both conceptually and nonconceptually." - Robert Agustus Masters

Why I am “Integral”

Tags: Integral Robert Agustus Masters

BOTH Dennett AND Dharma

http://mu.gaia.com — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:17:23 GMT

C4Chaos has recently posted alink to a Jonathan Haidt essay MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION.

But once again I’m frustrated by people, Haidt not Coolmel, lumping Dennett in the with new athiests. Sure he’s riding the same road as the bandwagons of Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens and he’s put his head well above the parapet, but his philosophy of science and religion is sound and not just saber-rattling.

Thank you Integral Options Cafe for not lumping Dan Dennett in with the fundamentalist, or Loud, athiests. Haidt’s essay is a good example of where people are mis-understanding Dennett.

The Failure of the Loud Atheists blog post says the biggest flaw of the atheist fundamentalists “is their failure to distinguish between objective reality and subjective reality” and I couldn’t agree more.

But Dennett, in both ‘Breaking the Spell‘ and ‘Consciousness Explained‘ is playing a completely different game and to roll him up into the angry atheist crowd is mis-reading him almost completely.

Dennett recognises interiors and exteriors and he doesn’t ever collapse them. He recognises evolution and development. He recognises the difference between left and right-hand quadrants (although wouldn’t use those terms). And he states clearly that 3rd person methodologies have a large part to play in really understanding interiors, how they came to be, how they work, who has them, who doesn’t.

He’s got Zone1 and Zone2 of the 8 Integral Methodological Pluralism zones covered and he spotted the blind spot that phenomenology has to structuralism and 3rd person methods. His hetrophenomenological method addressed the problem back in the 1980s.

This, from his latest TED talk, says it nicely.

"Scientists, using their from-the-outside, 3rd person methods, can tell you things about your own consciousness that you'd ever dream of. And the fact that you are not the authority on your own consciousness that you thought you were.“

see some amazing examples of how we just have no idea...

Dan Dennett: Can we know our own minds?

Has anyone read anything other than ‘Breaking the Spell’? Its his most ‘populist’ to date and perhaps suffers because of that worldly connection but ‘Consciousness Explained’ lays it all our pretty clearly.

I also think Haidt is being disingenuous in saying Dennett is mis-reading the evidence. Haidt doesn’t show how the studies he cites are reliable and he fails to recognise Dennett’s main point in BTS, that giving is an outward show of ‘belief in belief’ rather than a result of belief itself.

To say “religious believers give more money than secular folk to secular charities” shows us very little about their interiors.

If giving is part of the creed and a way of proving you believe to your peers then that starts to sound like pre-conventional morality to me, rather than proving religious people are morally superior to secular folk.

This whole debate has been polarised for way too long. Can we please have BOTH Dennett AND Dharma.

Crossposted from Both/And

Filed under
AQAL
Athiesm
Brain
Dennett
Integral
Mind
Science
Understanding the Mind
both/and

Tags: AQAL, Athiesm, Brain, Dennett, Integral, Mind, Science, Understanding the Mind, both/and

Humphrys in Search of God

http://mu.gaia.com — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:08:32 GMT

“John Humphrys as you’ve never heard him before - talking with religious leaders about his unfulfilled desire to believe in God.” - Radio 4, 31 October 2006

A great set of interviews with religious leaders from ‘the big three’ in the UK. Asking how is faith possible in a world of suffering. Whether there a place for religion in an age dominated by science.

Voted Best New Programme in the 2006 VLV Awards for Excellence in Broadcasting, Humphrys’ guests are the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams; Professor Tariq Ramadan, Muslim academic and author; and Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi.

Thank you BBC for making these available on the listen again service. Not only can we listen to the interviews as broadcast but also listen to extended versions of the interviews.

Listen

Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams

Programme as broadcast on 31 October 2006 (29m)
Extended interview part 1 (54m)
Extended interview part 2 (37m)

Professor Tariq Ramadan

Programme as broadcast on Tuesday 7th November (29m)
Extended interview (48m)

Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi

Programme as broadcast on Tuesday 14th November (29m)
Extended interview (1h 08m)

I LOVE THE BBC

More my mutterings on:
suffering
Athiesm
Upper Left
Skepticism
Judaism
Islam
God
Christianity

cross-post: http://michaelrose.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/humphrys-in-search-of-god/

Tags: BBC Radio4, John Humphrys, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Archbishop of Canterbury, suffering, god

Dennett on YouTube

http://mu.gaia.com — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:48:37 GMT

Tags:

Current Bun

http://mu.gaia.com — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:05:37 GMT

Today the Popbitch gossip-wranglers pointed out the blatant hipocrasy of British tabloid 'The Sun' today.

Jade Goody, "Celebrity" Big Brother Loser, was chided by 'The Sun' for being racist.

Her offence? Calling fellow contestant Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood star, "Shilpa Poppadom".

Compare this "outrage" with 'The Sun' headline for Chinese snooker star Ding Junghui: "Pot Noodle".

IIIiiiiiiidiots

Tags: Big Brother Jade Shilpa

Announcing the Campaign for Real Aliens

http://mu.gaia.com — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 21:26:37 GMT

Ok... it starts today

The Campaign for Real Aliens now invites your submissions

Are you fed up waiting for SETI to find intelligent life out there?

Terence McKenna has suggest that looking for radio signals in space is so bound up in its cultural assumptions and anthropomorphic bais that it's like searching the vast expanse for a good Italian restaurant.

Yes, the probability of finding life out there is 1, but while we're waiting to make contact aren't we missing out on the wonderous and truly alien beings that are already amoung us?

Behold the colour-changing cuttle-fish - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz2_pMCeOyI

Behold the Romanesco Cabbage

So... once again I'm in agreementwith Richard Dawkins... this world is more amazing than any alien world... and this blog is now dedicated to showing this world in all it's alien beauty.

Tags:

bloody new age crap refuted at last

http://mu.gaia.com — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:28:10 GMT

Dolphins ‘stop smiling the moment our back is turned’

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/

Tags:

You -humans- are a whispy experiment

http://mu.gaia.com — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:30:59 GMT

Stuart on Flickr

Thank you Stuart for releasing this new voice into the world.

I never knew such wisdom was possible on the train from Totness to London! :)

"You -humans- are a whispy experiment... the Game is not here to accomodate you... "You" -the relative self- will play for a while, then be deleted, unceremoniously, and without delay, and the Game (which the Real You created, sustains, and adores) will continue without a hitch. And it will continue to be brutal, blissful, cruel, redeeming, ineffable, paradoxical, and Perfectly Fucked Up Beyond All Conceivable Measure...Wake up and die right (now)."

http://www.stuartdavis.com/node/1119

Tags: Stuart Davis, Vajra Sword, Blog

Just what is going on?

http://mu.gaia.com — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 09:17:21 GMT

Is Wilber a 'Type 5' leader?

Have you got a Neitzche Reader?

Zinadine Zidane or Socrates?

Make up your goddam mind, please

Software At Low Pr1ce

select ur perfect model

get a degree - make your problems go away

Please Read - Your Lucky Day

Increlase Ejaclulation Pills

Reply now - lower your bills

A blog that serves no purpose at all e(xcept as a stupid vanity project)

oversized erect nipples (le blog de oversized nipples erect)

Tags: Wilber Enegram Types Neitzche Zinadine Zidane Socr

Ken Wilber is a Fraud

http://mu.gaia.com — Wed, 24 May 2006 09:40:36 GMT

There has been so much newsgroup and forum waffle about Ken and the "Berlin Wall" that I felt I needed to share this essay.

http://www.bluetruth.org/flex/ken_wilber_is_a_fraud/173/1

It totally blew me away!

It reads as a Zone 2 look at what's inside Ken.

It is, of course, doomed to fail, but for Zone 1 we have the snippets in 'A Simple Feeling of Being' and 'One Taste'

- if only I could see the moon and stop looking at the damned finger. I have to 'be' at 2nd Tier causal to 'get' 2nd Tier Causal - at the moment it's like a trip a museum of the nondual and returning with nothing, except a memory and a ticket stubb.

Ken may seem inauthentic from Tier-1/Zone 2, but he's probably partying with the pure beings that are our own highest selves, he probably sees us as Buddhas, deities, dakini's, but he knows we do not, he feels our pain and is helping us all to realise we are all always already awake, if only we'd realise the great perfection of his apparent imperfection.

The best way to know Ken's mind is to know our own.

Tags: Ken Wilber, I-I, David Deida, Buddhas, authenticity, Zone 1, Zone 2, deities, dakinis